On 29 March 2011 12:26, john whelan <jwhelan0...@gmail.com> wrote: > Speaking as someone with a background in science I think I agree with > Elizabeth's interpretation. > > I get the impression the study is much more subjective than solid, the > sample size far too small to get any meaningful results other than this > needs more research dollars to further define etc etc.
ah, you mean the language is elitist and highly complicated? yes, i would agree - welcome to academia. i'm not sure what the catch phrase of the angry redneck ('politically correct') has to do with that though and unfortunately this (complicated language) is common to any area of any complexity, even the holy OSM itself. personally (having a background in sociology), the abstract is meaningful and does make sense. to a sociologist. to expect to understand the language is like reading a phd thesis on astro-physics and complaining because you can't understand it. these are complicated themes, based on complicated theories. it's not written with amateur GISers in mind, although it perhaps should be so the knowledge is made available to the source it draws from dissecting what and why: the type of study done here demands a small sample set - it is not supposed to be representative, generalizable, or follow any other ideals of the scientific method. the value is in a huge amount of data from a small number of people, learning about their understanding of the concepts, not bland statistics like the number of edits they do, the date they joined osm, etc. it is typically used to guide the creation of new theories, which are then tested with quantitative research (asking for bland stats). to anyone used to working with the scientific method (most comp sci, engineering, physics, biology, electronics, etc, professionals), this can look a bit lightweight, but it's a different way of ascribing meaning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative_research for more > I've just been reading a study on licensing by a consultant. Take out the > jargon and it says the more liberal the license the more likely it is that > people will use your "Open data". Well yes but did we really need a study > to discover that? is that all it said? i'd be surprised if there wasn't slightly more > I like jargon when it is used as a short hand way of expressing something to > a group of people working in a field but not when it is used to add > "respectability" to a report. this is true, i'd agree, but you're in a difficult situation. how do you explain difficult concepts, which may themselves rest on other difficult concepts, without talking in this way? -- robin http://tangleball.org.nz/ - Auckland's Creative Space http://openstreetmap.org.nz/ - Open Street Map New Zealand http://bumblepuppy.org/blog/ _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk